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Love alone connects

The energy of Good
Friday always feels strangely silent and empty. God is entering into
the pain and torment of the world so fully that He seems more silent,
less present, more removed, even gone.

This is as it is in
true suffering. You are removed by degrees from the world till the
torture of your physical reality overwhelms and annihilates you.
Empties you of everything, it seems, except the pain, the exquisite
moment of unutterable torture that defies description yet in which
you are absolutely caught.

Communication is no
longer about dialogue. Words seem empty here. The person can no
longer speak and tell of their experience.

Few are able to bear
the pain of watching, waiting, being, with the person who suffers to
the end, especially if that pain is drawn out over years and years.
This is no longer a place of comfort, yet it is a place of the heart.
It is a place where love is required, where love alone connects and
stays with that person, where that person also can still connect with
you, through love.

Love borne of the
Spirit, remains connected, aids in some unspoken way, takes wings and
flies out to greet and touch and somehow give strength in the
bleakest, most barren, pain- wracked place. Love alone survives and
ultimately holds us and brings healing despite the pain and grief.

As Jesus is dying on
the cross, few remained. It was a barren and terrible place to be.
Even the Father must have wept. For His Son could no longer feel His
presence, such was His agony.

And yet, it is in
this most difficult place that love triumphs. Despite the suffering,
Christ enters into every single moment of agony in the world. He
draws it to Himself and is so overloaded by distress, shame, horror,
guilt, hurt and evil, that it must have been almost impossible to
feel His Fathers love, yet still He reaches out, knowing that He is
love, knowing the gift He can give, knowing that as He is physically
broken, so the Spirit that heals transforms, transcends is released
for all time.

What Power of love
is here in this place, that despite such agony, such separation from
all that is good, hopeful, true, beautiful, uplifting, joyful,
precious, Christ opens His heart as He is physically dying, to
embrace each one of us and offers us new life, a new way, a new path
of Spirit that brings us to everlasting Hope.

As we in our
individual suffering, whether in the agony of the cross or watching
at the foot of the cross, enter into the meaning of Good Friday and
contemplate, through experience, His passion, may we be reminded that
we are bearing witness to absolute love and that even if we feel Him
not, because our own suffering and grief is too great, yet still He
is present and holding us too. And this is the place of profound
miracle, because of His most precious gift of life. May we each
experience this Holy power on this bleak and saddest of days. Amen

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